The whole ecosystem of the Precipice came at us to defend its core.
It had stopped being a mob of monsters. The falling sky of uncreated ash and broken basalt had driven the endless swarm of the corrupted dead together, and somewhere on the way down they had become a single organism. A tidal wave of multi-limbed beasts, pale bloated flesh and jagged rusted iron surged across the wet pumice. They rushed the lip of the tectonic drain with one purpose, which was to protect the huge golden gear churning away at the bottom of it.
I didn't step back.
For the first time since I fell into this lightless abyss, I didn't have to scrape the bottom of my soul to survive a fight. The permanent ink lines tracking up my ribs and neck hummed with a heavy, steady warmth, like a stove someone had left burning. My well was full to the brim with twenty-five thousand units of Dark Essence, the price the Precipice had paid me for taming its mother of dragons.
